


A Flame In Your Heart

by Zigzagwanderer



Series: The Very Thought Of You [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Blow Jobs, Brendol Hux's A+ Parenting, Country House Drama, Eventual relationship, Happy Ending, Homophobic Language, Hux Is An Ex-Fighter Pilot, Huxloween 2019, Injured Armitage Hux, Kylux - Freeform, Love, M/M, Master and Servant Situation, Mentions of Aversion Therapy, Minor Violence, On-Again/Off-Again Relationship, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Pining, Porn, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-World War II, Rekindled Romance, Ren Is A Butler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2020-12-24 09:29:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21097220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zigzagwanderer/pseuds/Zigzagwanderer
Summary: Huxloween 2019 prompt. 'Bonfire'.Kind of a post-WW2/English Country House/Period Romance. (There is a sequel called Our Love Is Different because I like Ren in lingerie...)''I don't want to set the world on fireI just want to start a flame in your heart.In my heart I have but one desireAnd that one is you, no other will do."Thanks for reading, and any kudos and comments are wonderful...xxxxx And I'm on Tumblr as zigzag-wanderer.





	1. Chapter 1

“I’m afraid,” Armitage Hux flicked cigarette ash into the grate, “that I must decline.”

The Head Butler continued to stare at Hux’s back, absorbing the sneering tone along with the scent of Hux's expensive pomade. Sophisticated, no doubt, it neatly unpolished the bright copper Ren remembered, into a duller, more defeated bronze.

“You…cannot _refuse_, sir. The master of the house always lights the Samhain bonfire.”

“I’d thank you not to question me, Ren,” Armitage snapped. He was looking coldly up at the portrait of Brendol Hux that hung over the fireplace. “I abhor these…foolish traditions.”

He pulled the mourning ribbons from the corners of the picture-frame. The black silk slid down like a blade, felling the row of cloying condolence cards from the mantlepiece, reminding Ren of the rotten trees in the orchard. The wormy, wasted wind-falls. 

He looked down at his own clenched, white-gloved hands. He had worn full livery out of respect for the late Lord Hux, but it was heavy, and ridiculous. 

The storm threw more wet leaves at the windows. 

“Shall I start the fire?” He offered sullenly, in the end, moving towards the scuttle of kindling.

“No.” It was rapped out. A command. 

Ren hadn’t seen much of Brendol’s son over the last few years. Hux’s infrequent visits home from Cambridge had ended with the advent of war, but even during his convalescence, and then after his delayed graduation, Hux had chosen to stay away.

The old master never spoke of any of it, but the medals of valour were a matter of report in the local newspaper. 

As was Hux’s divorce.

“Draw those damn curtains, can't you?” Hux shrouded himself more deeply in his greatcoat. Smacked his cane down across the side-table and dropped heavily into the nearest armchair. 

“Sir.” Ren took the liberty of turning on the lamps; the dust on the bulbs burned like brimstone. 

Hux lit another cigarette, and Ren saw how swiftly Hux drowned the match in the vase of ugly yellow asters at his elbow. Mrs Rey did her best, but the gardens were in as much of a slump as the rest of the estate. 

“You can get out now.” Hux hadn’t met Ren’s eye since his arrival, long after the funeral. 

Ren assumed it was because he had been made to manage the farm instead of enlisting. 

Because he had been promoted prematurely. 

Because he had once been Hux’s lover. 

“I’m not so much of a damned invalid that I can’t fetch my own drink.” 

“Of course, sir. Very good sir.” Ren put poison in his words and hoped the mocking servility of it would taint the last of the good brandy.

Even though he had seen clearly how Hux’s hand had shaken, as he’d struck the little wooden match into flame.


	2. Chapter 2

Hux was selling the paddock, some heirlooms. Finn catastrophised about the future into his porridge. 

Mrs Rey moved his secateurs off the kitchen table, and fretted over the sawdusty loaf. Even something as simple as bread wasn’t the same since the war. 

Ren fastened his cuffs, gave out his instructions for the day, then carried his Lordship’s tray upstairs. 

Every morning since his return, Hux had bathed and dressed and got himself over to the breakfasting chair to smoke, unaided. The window was always thrown wide open, so that the tremors of agony and effort could easily be ascribed to the cold, as Hux gazed down at the firewood piling up into a sizeable heap upon the lawn.

Every morning, the heavy, brocade bedding was conspicuously smoothed out into a neutral no-man’s-land. 

Because Ren, it would seem, was not allowed to service Hux in any way. 

Ren knocked at the bedroom door. 

“My lord?”

Inside, for once, was a hot, hellish darkness. Hux had just awoken, by the looks of it, and was sat up, gasping silently, struggling to leave the nightmare entirely behind. His eyes were two greasy knots, in a plank planed flat by terror. 

“Armitage?”

Hux made a noise. Ren started to leave. “I apologise, sir. I’ll come back when…”

“No.” Hux shook sweat up into the air. “Please. Don’t go,” he scraped out. 

Ren sat down. Hux stumbled gracelessly towards the bathroom, retching.

The church bells clanked dully across the dale. Finn hollered around the garden at the dogs. 

Hux finally limped back in. Pale, but clean. He was naked beneath the gaudy sheen of his dressing-gown, and Ren felt a spike of want drive deep into his belly.

There hadn’t been anyone else, before or since. 

“Won’t you be missed?” Hux stood, unevenly, between Ren’s legs. He’d lost weight. Ren felt like an ox before him, overly muscular from farm work, clumsy, and in need of goading. “I wasn’t certain that you would stay, just because I asked you to.”

“You’re in charge of me,” Ren shrugged. “And I want to help you.” 

“Good,” Hux said, and kissed him on the mouth. 

Hux refused to let Ren prepare him, always one for the pain of it, so Ren refused to fuck him. 

“Very well,” Hux bit amicably into Ren’s collarbone, full of his old, rueful charm. He spat into his fist and stroked Ren’s cock swollen, then sucked him down hard, with a thumb tucked up tight inside Ren’s arse. 

He rutted and came across Ren’s thigh, even as his lips shone sticky from Ren’s endless spill.

Ren put the room to rights. Poured the tea.

“There you go.” Hux combed Ren’s hair straight. “I’m sorry I haven’t written for so long.” 

“It wouldn’t have been appropriate.”

Hux laughed at that. 

“Well, I have a tragic cover story now. _Damaged by divorce, and from being downed in his Spitfire over the jolly old English Channel, Lord Hux now seeks only the noble companionship of his faithful family manservant._”

Hux lit a cigarette. He could hardly look at the flame.

“You’re glad your father's dead, of course.” Ren blew the match out. “But I wasn’t certain that you’d stay.”

“If you’ll have me back, then I will, Ky.” Hux pulled him close. “You’re in charge of me.” 

He was shaking, feverish. He started undoing the shirt buttons that Ren had only just done up. He licked at Ren’s throat. “You know you always have been, my darling boy.”


	3. Chapter 3

Hux reacquainted Ren with Ren himself, with his intellect, and with the needs of his body; things which had faded away into insignificance over the last few years. 

Ren reacquainted Hux with his inheritance; an estate stripped back to the bone. Even the wooden skeleton of the bonfire seemed to be growing up rickety, and undernourished. 

“You’ve been running the whole show?” Hux’s voice was sharp with strain. It showed in the shorter swing of his stick, as they walked the long way around, avoiding both the lawn, and its thorny crown. 

Ren wanted to carry Hux back to bed. Finger him open and fuck him over and over again, until he slept, dreamlessly. 

“With only one young widow and a blind under-gardener to help you? What the bloody hell was the Ministry thinking?”

The other men had been called away, one by one. The women too. Ren hadn’t dwelt upon it much.

The light in the greenhouse was muzzy, filtered through wild growth and grime-clouded panes. 

“You make me feel like such a lazy dunce, Ky. I had just the one job to do, and it was something I enjoyed. Hardly seemed like work.” He kicked over a stack of pots. “I even ended that in a bloody smash-up.”

“Armitage.” Ren knelt, patiently, to pick up the pieces. “You flew fighter planes.”

“What of it? You made things grow. I just bloody well destroyed them.”

Ren reached over and gently drew Hux close. He was shaking. Ren rubbed his cheek into the tweed across Hux’s groin. It smelled of cold autumn air and Hux’s soap. 

Hux stared down and pushed on Ren’s bottom lip with his thumb. “My God. I want you like I’ve never wanted anything else in my whole rotten life.”

Ren kissed Hux’s palm. The skin of that hand was smooth and shiny with older scars.

“I thought you’d gone for ever.”

“I know, my darling. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” 

They eased down Hux’s trousers. 

The map of damage and healing across Hux’s ruined hip unfolded as far as the crease of his leg, and in the other direction spiralled down to the knee-cap. There were surprisingly few burn marks, but Ren was careful where he gripped and stroked nonetheless. 

Hux was not, screwing up Ren’s hair tightly in his fist. 

“Tell me I can have you? Please. You’re all I need. The rest of it can go to hell.”

In answer, Ren nodded. Licked the rim of his mouth until it was wet, letting Hux see the lewdness he was capable of. 

“God Almighty, Ky.” 

Hux fed his cock in, and Ren heard him whine like an animal, with the pleasure of it.

The crescents of glass high up in the roof shone pale, and opaque, like slices of apple. 

Ren closed his eyes and swallowed Hux deeper. The taste of him, the soft prickle at the root, the sucking sounds; it all made him drunk, dizzy. He moved his head, compensating for Hux’s unforgiving joints. 

There was an abrupt, artificial rustling from outside. It was overloud in the quiet. Mrs Ren appeared, cautiously, as a bent shadow, across the broken glass wall. 

“Excuse me, my lord.” 

Hux stopped what he was doing, but kept his cock in Ren’s throat. 

Ren found himself hard as iron, at the thought of being seen that way, whorish and prayerful. 

“Yes?” Hux used his clipped tone. It carried well. The door was closed but not locked.

“Beg pardon, sir.” Mrs Rey called out. “But the village have sent men to speak to you. About…well, it’s common knowledge you won’t be lighting up the bonfire, sir. They’re not happy about it.”

“Very good.” Hux shifted his weight. “Show them into the library. We’ll be along shortly.”

Mrs Rey went away.

Hux came over Ren’s tongue almost immediately, after that, biting down on his knuckles. 

Ren fumbled to undo himself, rather than make a mess of his uniform, and Hux finished him off into a handkerchief, praising and encouraging him in the most vulgar, heavenly way possible.

The mist rose up from the river.

They walked back to the kitchen.

In the scullery, Hux leaned in to kiss Ren with a casual, joyous carelessness. 

“Right. Upstairs with you. It’s about time I let you take what’s yours, don’t you think?”

Hux was smiling, boyishly. He corrected the wayward knot of his tie. “But first, let me go and tell these uninvited gents to fuck the hell off my land.”


	4. Chapter 4

The 12-bore had been Brendol Hux’s favourite. Ren cleaned it methodically, in case he was required to shoot someone later that evening. 

Hux was out, getting the last of the potatoes up. 

Their duties were blurring, and Mrs Rey scolded Ren for it. 

He continued to oil the gun in silence. Hux had agreed to light the bonfire, and so needed to hurt the humiliation away somehow, and there were limits to how much pain Ren would give to him, boundaries that Hux had sweetly accepted, but which did not stop him arching his back as best he could each time, and begging beguilingly for more. 

In the afternoon, Ren had to help Hux into the bathtub, the digging having done him in good and proper.

Because it was easier, Ren took off his uniform and climbed in too.

He flannelled roughly, under Hux’s arms. 

Hux was fey, and feverish, either due to, or in spite of, the cramp and exhaustion.

“You won’t actually do it, will you.”

“Whatever can you mean?” Hux opened one eye. “I solemnly swore to preside over their bloody heap of twigs, didn’t I?” 

He winced as Ren scraped mud off the fracture-lines laddering his shinbone. “Granted, the angry mob did have my balls in a vice at the time, but when a chap gives his word, even under duress…”

“They wouldn’t…_do_…anything to us, Armitage.” 

“Can’t take the chance, Ky.” 

“The Hux family _built_ the village.” 

Hux flicked ash into the soap-dish. “What you and I _are_ to each other…” It was all scrubbing off, under Ren’s attentions; beneath the bravado, to Ren and for Ren alone, Hux was delicate, thin-skinned. “What we _do_ with each other…” 

He sighed. “I don’t want them to snub you in the street, or stop serving you in the public house, my darling. And I don’t want that fucking sanctimonious priest feeling obliged to write a letter, full of vile things, about _us_, to your _mother_...” 

Ren stood up, suddenly. Half the bathwater sloshed out, over the sides. 

“You _want_ to get in a fight about it. Be modern, and difficult. You _could_ just tell them the truth. That you can’t face it. That you have…shell-shock.”

Hux squinted up at him, cigarette dangling damply from his mouth. “Sweetheart…”

“You’re a war hero, Lord Hux,” Ren evaded Hux’s conciliatory grip and fell out, onto the tiled floor. “But you’re still the same spoiled child that gave me up at the drop of a hat.”

It took almost an hour for Hux to get out, unassisted, rinse away the grime from the bathtub, then dry both himself and the floor, using one threadbare towel. 

The bedroom was unlit. Hux went in. He dropped down onto the bed and Ren rolled over immediately and started kissing him. 

Hux grunted, shivering into Ren’s heat. 

“I don’t deserve you,” Hux said. “I wouldn’t blame you in the slightest if you packed me in.”

Ren simply eased Hux onto his good hip. Reached around to pull at Hux’s soft cock, biting Hux’s shoulder. Hux let himself be played with, let Ren press an oiled finger into his hole. Once he was open enough, he let Ren fuck him, the angle of it shallow and awkward and excruciatingly unsatisfying. 

“Put me on my back, can’t you?” Hux griped. “We’re not getting anywhere like this. Not when I can’t lift my bloody leg more than an inch.”

“No. Take it like this or I stop.”

Hux bit his lip. 

“Very well.”

It lasted forever, it lasted too long. Hux pleaded and sweated, tore at Ren’s hair and cursed him comprehensively.

Ren ground into him and worked him slowly, building and extending the pleasure on and on, until Hux was snivelling and sobbing, shaking and sore. 

Eventually, when he finally came, Hux thought he might rather die than ever let Ren go again.

The cold snuffed the sun out, and blackened the trees and the sky and the leaf-littered lawn. 

Hux hauled himself towards his cane and pocket-watch.

He grumbled at the time. Ren yawned.

Hux tilted his head. “The thing you said about shell shock. That’s not it.”

“What?” Ren blinked. 

“I pranged my bird in the _drink_, my darling. Broke damn near every bone I had, but there wasn’t a lot of fire, from what I recall. Anyhow, that’s not quite the reason I don’t want to take part in their tomfoolery.”

He held up his hand. “_This_ is why I will never put a torch to my ancestral Samhain bonfire, Ky.” 

The belt of scarring ran straight across, from thumb to opposite edge, an ancient smoothness. It had none of the raw, mazy terror of Hux’s injured body. 

“I thought you knew the whole, sordid story?” 

Ren brushed his lips against the inside of Hux’s wrist. It was sticky from their seed. He licked it clean. “No.”

Outside, Mrs Ren and Finn were muddling through the party preparations. 

Hux patted Ren on the flank.

“Well, provided I’m not strung up on that old oak before supper, I’ll tell you.” He put both hands to Ren’s face and kissed him. 

“Now, let’s get me into this bloody tuxedo, shall we? I’m in just the right mood for a party.”


	5. Chapter 5

_When the locals started dancing around the bonfire, Brendol Hux went inside. All this flimflam about everyone being in the war together was giving his so-called guests entirely the wrong idea._

_“Hiding from the peasantry too, Snoke?” He made sure to slam the library door shut._

_The doctor opened opiated eyes. _

_Shifted sluggishly in his comfortable chair. “You know what that rabble are like, Bren. Forever pestering me with their boils and bellyaches. A purge from the veterinarian would sort out the lot of them.”_

_“Speaking of horse piss.” Lord Hux poured his cup of punch onto the library fire. “Let’s have a proper drink, eh?”_

_The clocks chimed dustily on. _

_Dr Snoke finished his whiskey._

_“I assume Armitage is still sulking?”_

_“Gets this mooning about from his bloody mother.” Brendol clattered the decanter to and fro. “He’s going to university whether he likes it or not.”_

_“Some local filly’s caught his eye, Bren, you mark my words,” Snoke leered. “He’s got all the symptoms of his first infatuation.” _

_There was a pause. _

_“Well, all I can say is it’s about bloody time. I'd had plenty of women by his age.”_

_The villagers were told to go home. For once, Lord Hux thanked God for the blackout restrictions._

_The two men stumbled drunkenly up the wide staircase. _

_“Tell him he needs to get the damn bitch out of his system, Snoke. And if you can’t talk some sense into him, I swear I’ll beat that bloody doe-eyed look clean off his miserable face.”_

_Brendol Hux opened the door to his son’s bedroom, and the doctor and the lord pushed their way inside._

The lawn stank of uncleared leaves. 

Ren stood at Hux’s shoulder. He had the shotgun beside him, but Hux, in his eveningwear and greatcoat, and leaning on his cane, seemed indomitable. 

Ren could imagine how Squadron Leader Hux must have been, on active service. 

The stranger in uniform that had come home during the war had been something different again; an insufferable idiot, drunk and facetious and, for one agonising year, heartbreakingly _married_.

Ren had insulted him, shunned him, but they had fucked at every single opportunity nonetheless, because not to have one another, however bitterly, however briefly, was seemingly, shamefully _impossible_. 

The clouds above dashed themselves against the moon. 

Hux caught Ren regarding him solemnly, and appeared ridiculously pleased. 

“Well, here goes nothing,” he murmured.

The villagers stood circling the wood stack, waiting for Hux to falter. The lack of light had regressed their faces into a row of turnip lanterns, glittering of eye and slitted of mouth. 

Hux gave the dedication in Gaelic, despite the fact that only the elders understood it nowadays.

Mrs Rey carried out the ceremonial torch in its silver holder. 

Hux looked at the box of matches. Then at his scarred hand, and then at Ren. 

Mrs Rey looked at Hux. 

Her husband’s medals were pinned to her shawl. 

“Lord Hux?” 

Hux turned towards her, grimness going gentle. 

“Yes, Mrs Rey?”

“Let me do it, sir.” The housekeeper put her small chin up. “In my Tom’s memory, if your lordship would allow me the honour? He was a good man, and a fine soldier, and he spoke highly of your kindness and bravery, sir.”

“Mrs Rey…”

“I’d like to light the bonfire, this Samhain, sir, for all those who didn’t come back.”

There was a silence. 

Nobody moved.

Then Hux nodded, his hand dropping away from where he had his service pistol holstered.

Mrs Rey set the torch alight, then used it to start up the blaze.

Still nobody moved. Then a few people clapped. 

Ren felt his stomach unknot.

Hux pulled off his signet ring, with his family crest on it, and dropped it into the flames.

Then he smiled at Mrs Rey, and took Ren’s arm, and the two men went back inside the house.


	6. Chapter 6

_“You bloody pervert.” Brendol spat. “Damned queer.”_

_“Get out, can’t you?” Armitage staggered to his feet and pulled on his trousers. _

_He’d been clouted and shoved across the room, and blood ran down from a cut on his head. His lip had split open on his father’s knuckles. _

_“I have a right to privacy…” _

_“You’ve no more standing in my house than the fucking scullery maid.” Brendol threw his son against the wall. “You have nothing. You are nothing.”_

_Dr Snoke continued to stare out of the window, just as Armitage had been doing when they’d caught him masturbating. _

_Oblivious to the pandemonium above, one of the footmen was out on the lawn, single-handedly clearing up after the party. _

_He had stripped down to his undershirt, and his rather long, dark hair was tied away from his face. _

_Snoke unconsciously licked his lips. It really was quite the view._

_“If I might make a suggestion.” The doctor’s eyes were dark. “I have heard of a highly effective treatment for such…deviances. An aversion therapy, where pain is used to kill off more…pleasurable associations.”_

_He leaned across and held up his godson’s hand. The same hand that Armitage had been stroking his cock with, while he’d been watching his lover Ren tidy up the trestle tables. _

_“Do you think, my lord,” Dr Snoke smiled softly, “that the bonfire down there still holds a little heat?”_

“They…_branded_ you, Armitage?”

“They bundled me down to the bonfire. Father restrained me. Then that drug-addled quack forced me to hold a flaming branch and promise not to be a homosexual anymore.” 

Hux shrugged. 

“The burns…We were told there’d been an accident.”

Ren had gone even quieter than usual. Hux immediately gave him something to do. 

“It didn’t work terribly well, as therapies go.” He let Ren be tender, in his undressing. Their mouths brushed together, often. “In point of fact, I haven’t managed to stop loving you since the day we met.”

Hux swallowed. 

Ren’s efficient movements slowed to a standstill. 

“And I have tried, my darling, from time to time.” Hux reached up and tucked Ren’s hair behind his ear. “But you’re like that indelible ink I keep getting on my damn cuffs.”

The surveyor was arriving the next day. They were both very tired. Mrs Rey had passed comments about how noise travelled in large, empty houses.

Still, Ren laid Hux out on the bed. Ground his clothed body against Hux’s nakedness. 

Hux began to pant, sweet and gruff against Ren’s neck. 

“But you did leave,” Ren muttered, teeth in tendon. “The next day.”

Hux nodded. His chest and cheeks were blotched with arousal. “I really had no choice. The old bastard threatened to have things…done to you, otherwise.”

A few fireworks went off over the meadow. 

“At the very least he’d have horsewhipped you off the grounds, without a reference. As things stood, it was odds on you’d be kept busy running the farm. Not even conscription could touch you then."

Guilt slowed Hux’s hungry-handed rubbing. 

Ren’s uniform trousers were becoming a mess, inside and out. He supposed it no longer mattered. 

Hux cleared his throat. “Ky, I am sorry. I took away your freedom to fight. For me. For your country. I hadn’t had much practise in doing the right thing, and I so badly needed to keep you safe.”

Ren nodded, after a moment. Shuffled backwards.

Hux was clumsy about Ren’s belt and socks and buttons, but careful as he licked his fingers and eased them into Ren’s arse. 

Ren felt his cock harden in Hux’s mouth. 

He pushed this way and that. 

In either direction was a slide of sublime sensation; in either direction was Hux.

There were more fiery flowerings, in the sky.

Before Ren could start towards the finish, Hux pulled off, and fell against the pillows. 

“You’ll have to do all of the work, I’m afraid.” 

He choked himself off a little, dripping with desire over his clenched fist, yet clearly trying to be courteous. 

Ren snorted out a quick, shy laugh. He picked up the bottle of liniment. 

“You don’t usually want me like this.”

“Sweetheart, what you want matters too.” Hux’s voice was strained. “We have to make sure that doesn’t get forgotten from now on.”

What Ren wanted was for Hux to plunge upward, inside of him. For Hux to scratch at his nipples, to fuck Ren’s wet cock with his smooth-scarred palm. 

What Ren wanted was to see Hux suckle on his fingers, and to hear him curse when Ren pushed down, again and again, on Hux’s long, slippery prick.

Hux did not think of himself as a romantic, but it was most definitely the _entitlement_ in Ren’s voice, when he demanded these things of Hux, that made him come much quicker than he had intended. 

For the first time, at any rate, that hallowed and holy night. 

In the morning, Ren raked the dead charcoal of the bonfire out into the dew. The lawn bore a wound, but it always recovered, more or less.

Hux finished reading the letter in his hand. Ren stole a bite of Hux’s toast and marmalade.

“The Veteran’s Hospital…they’re keen for Mrs Rey and Finn to remain employed here, after the sale goes through. If they’re amenable, of course.”

Ren knelt, grubbing for something in the soot and mud. 

The ring itself had survived, but the Hux family crest was erased, the metal melted into a new, abstract form. 

Ren passed it up to Hux, squinting into a slant of November light.

“Looks like a Henry Moore sculpture.”

Hux pretended he could be of use, helping Ren to his feet. “Oh? Does it indeed?” 

“You sent me a postcard, from your honeymoon,” Ren carefully slid his hand onto Hux’s hip. 

Pressed down where his very own suck-marks must be, beneath the drape of the dressing gown. 

They were standing far too close together, of course. Out in the open. 

He wanted to bring Hux off, there and then. 

“God. That bloody miserable day. That depressing park.”

“The card was lovely.” Ren gripped harder. “The statue was so pale, against the trees. I wondered if you’d ever go to places like that with me, instead of with her.” 

Hux pulled Ren’s hand away from his waist. 

And Ren thought, _fair enough_, but then Hux curled Ren’s fingers up to his lips and kissed them. Slipped the golden ring onto the smallest one. 

"Very well." Hux said. "London it is, to begin with."

And amid the ashes of the bonfire, it felt truly...ceremonial.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. If anyone's interested in what they get up to in a borrowed London flat.....let me know!! (I'm thinking..lingerie??!)


End file.
